MAY

THE MONTH OF FLOWER MOON

She stepped out through her porch door and into the golden hour of nearing sunset. She knew time acts differently in the garden, sun lingers, not being shot out of the sky by anticipations and fears of tomorrow. She needed this slow ending to the day, unhurried transition to dark hours.

She always loved this honey colored thick light with gold dust flecks in it, and she always loved flowers. Now, when she was over half of her life, and maybe most of her life, it turned into something more tender - a soft connection, a delicate relationship, an invisible string she could feel stretched along the garden path even that she couldn’t see it. And she could touch the string, and ask for impossible. Like slowing down the sunset.

The fiery globe was hanging only an inch above the horizon line. She looked around. Spider was busy weaving his web of dark desires and behind the web daisies swayed their white halos looking like a flock of nuns on vacation. Peonies were full of themselves, some so full they toppled and were spread on the ground now, fallen angels defeated in a battle with recent rain. Roses were hanging down heavy too, dripping with romance, and left petals on her shoulders as she quietly moved through the garden.

With the sun low the slanted light was only hitting top of the growth and below shadows were stirring with waking night life. She threw some water on ever thirsty sunflowers, and picked up a fat green caterpillar almost as big as a plant it was devouring. She gently placed it on towering stalk of tobacco plant. Caterpillar fought it at first writhing its surprisingly strong body into rings, then suddenly calmed down and took a bite from the edge of the leaf. Soon it will turn into cocoon, and then a moth, transformation that involved dissolving into a sort of primordial cellular soup that was somehow able to think itself into completely different form of being. For moths she planted a night garden of moonflower and sacred datura, and fragrant jasmine that glowed in a dark.

The sun was not quite touching horizon and she had plenty of time. She planted zinnia seeds she saved from last year and checked peas for aphids. Creeping thyme took over garden paths and as she kneeled in it the smell wafted through evening air, like a memory of a memory. Daffodil blooms were just a distant dream now, their strappy foliage ripe with the ends already flushed yellow. On her left was huge cow parsley and there was a small butterfly on one of its white umbrellas. It was strange for it to be still out this late and she stepped closer and saw the reason - one of the green garden spiders was holding onto it and the flutter of the wings was the spider’s turning it this way and that, wrapping its lifeless body in strands of silver. There was as much death in a garden as there were life, the balance strongly enforced and no exemptions were ever made. She learned to accept this. She cut few peonies and tall stems of sky blue delphiniums into a bucket of cold water to take home with her.

Sun was now the color of blood orange, still hanging an inch from horizon line and she let it set gently into a warm earth because she was done in the garden but wanted to see fireflies before she went inside for the night. She heard owls talking to each other and then mourning dove asked something in a sleepy voice but there was no answer back. Bats were darting through still slightly glowing sky and at the sign from invisible conductor fireflies started rising from the grassy field below her, appearing and disappearing according to some rhythm only they could hear, themselves looking like music notes on the dark sheet of a sky. She knew they will keep floating up,  finally blending with stars until the moon rolls out from behind the barn and puts them all to shame with its silvery brightness. She pressed a kiss onto a whirl of rose petals the color of a winter skin, picked up her bucket and headed home where kettle was on, candles were lit and an open book awaited.

until June

XOXO Larysa